Regardless of Meghan Trainor’s “All About that Bass” and other campaigns promoting a healthy body image, “fat” is still a popular insult. Calling someone fat isn’t the same as calling someone short or ugly. Calling someone fat isn’t the same as saying “you throw like a girl” to another boy on the baseball pitch. Calling someone fat doesn’t just have implications on that person’s physical appearance, but it has subtle and mean implications about that person’s character. “Fat” suggests gluttony, laziness and general lack of attractiveness. And that is why “fat” is still an effective and hurtful insult today.

I’m actually not, by anyone’s reasonable standards, fat. I have a healthy BMI. I’m right smack in the middle of the normal weight range for girls my height. Plus, I don’t actually look fat. I run at least 5km weekly. Plus I do pilates. Plus I like salad and oatmeal and other “clean eats”. Yet, today, when a male friend insinuated that I was fat, I just couldn’t get over it . I took it personally. And then I blamed myselffor taking it personally. And I wondered why I was getting so emotional about it – why was I overreacting to an assertion that a) wasn’t true and b) was probably made in jest? Because it wasn’t about my weight. And it wasn’t about my appearance. It was PERSONAL. It was about ME.

I realised that, a year ago, this exact friend had told me about how he thought fat people were lazy and useless and unreliable. Specifically he said: “I mean, come on, name one fat person who has, like, good grades and is, like, hardworking. The fat people I know have, like, bad grades and are, like, irresponsible.”

So I don’t think it’s unreasonable to be offended when, a year later, this same guy insinuates that I’m fat.

Then again, there are some outstanding fat people out there. Like Jay Leno – the Tonight Show guy. Josh from Drake and Josh – before his gastric bypass surgery. Sam Smith – love that guy. And I guess Neil DeGrasse Tyson is a little on the chubby side. But no one knows these people for being fat. We know these people because they’re talented, famous and cool. So why is “fat” still a legitimate insult? It shouldn’t be.

Let’s examine the gender dynamics when my friend insinuated that I was fat. Girls tell each other when they put on weight. Girls talk about their weight and their bodies when they are sharing common insecurities. Girls sometimes call each other “fatty” because it’s a nickname. But when a guy implies to a girl that she is fat, IT’S A DIFFERENT BALL GAME ALTOGETHER.

When a guy hints to a girl that she is fat, it subtly implies that she is unattractive – more specifically, it implies that she is unattractive to the opposite sex. And even if it is just a casual remark, it is offensive and hurtful.

But why am I still so riled up about it? Two words: eating disorders. I’ve had close friends who let insecurities about their body take over their entire lives. One of them used to do knee-lifts at every step when she walked around school, to make sure she was burning calories. I’ve seen my friends get reduced to mere skeletons – their eyes became more prominent and seemed larger in proportion to their face; their cheekbones stuck out; the joints of their shoulders and knees jutted out at weird angles. It was painful to watch and I hope I never have to see it again because it is one of the worst things you could ever see – to see a friend be consumed alive by her own personal insecurities.

And your insecurities about your body have nothing to do with how you actually look. People can feel inferior and ashamed about their bodies whether they are fat, skinny, or kind of average. People who make this warped and illogical association between “fat” and “worthless” are the reason for our insecurities about being fat. People who equate being fat with being inferior are making life hell for a lot of girls and guys out there. Subconsciously, we might all be guilty of perpetuating this idea.

Some people say we shouldn’t discriminate against fat people because “fat people can’t help being fat”. Well, that’s not the point. It’s like how some people say we shouldn’t discriminate against gay people because they didn’t choose to be gay. Not the point. Point is, even if individuals make a conscious choice to be fat/gay/black, it’s still wrong to discriminate against those demographics, and it’s still wrong to make it seem like these groups of people are somehow worth less than others.

Why? Because they aren’t worth less than others.In fact, we’re all, like, equal. Sorry, I thought we talked about this in the 1700s when the US wrote their declaration of independence. We also talked about this after apartheid was dismantled in South Africa. Oh and we settled this when slavery was banned. We settled it again when women fought for universal suffrage. And we settle this every day when we push for marriage equality. Every day there are more reasons not to insult people with one-dimensional assertions like “fat”, “gay”, “black”, “blue”, “silver”, “gold”.

We’ve had campaigns against slut shaming, and I reckon that would teach us that it’s wrong to judge people’s lifestyle choices. We don’t get to judge the harmless choices of other people. We don’t get to judge the circumstances surrounding those choices. The fact is that we all have different realities, and so we all make different choices about our lives. And it is impossible to objectively judge a lifestyle as right or wrong. So what if someone is ‘slutty’ or sexually promiscuous? So what if people are gay? So what if people are fat?

These traits are not anything to be ashamed of. They no longer count as insults in our enlightened era. But they still hurt. What we must do is to make sure these insults wither in terms of their value and impact. Even when they are used in friendly banter or casual conversation, when we use traits like “fat” to tease people or to make a judgement on them, we perpetuate the negative connotation that is associated with such traits. We make it shameful. We make people feel ashamed. And in a world that is struggling to come to terms with its diversity, such insults just aren’t funny anymore.

Like this:

Focus on the Family would find broader acceptance if they were comedians and not an organisation for educating youth about sexuality. But is there no truth at all to the gender stereotypes used by FotF? Was there no value at all to what they had said?

Don’t get me wrong: I fully understand that society is evolving with regard to gender roles and behavior, and I fully support that because I personally don’t fit into the conventional girl stereotype. And what Agatha Tan said about FotF perpetuating rape culture is absolutely right. Their brand of sex ed teaches guys that what a woman says might not actually be what a woman means, and so when she says ‘no’ to sex, she might actually mean yes and you can have a night of non-consensual fun. And that’s just wrong. And like, illegal.

But let’s not ignore that there are some visceral differences between men and women when it comes to communication. FotF said “when a girl says ‘it’s nothing’, it actually means ‘something is bothering me’.” As an adolescent female with the relevant reproductive organs, I can testify that there is a modicum of truth to that statement.

What’s so wrong with pointing out the art of subtlety when communicating with the opposite gender? What’s so wrong with giving guys a hint that sometimes they should read between the lines of what a girl says?

And there might be just a few other hard truths:

“While guys don’t want a girl to pretend to be clueless,” the FotF booklet says, “they also don’t want a girlfriend that questions their opinions and argues with their decisions all the time.”

The booklet also apparently said something like “Guys need respect and are insecure”.

Can you really argue with the notion that it’s just not nice when a girl walks all over a guy? Is it not true that girls deserve sensitivity from guys, and this sensitivity must be mutual?

I get Agatha Tan’s point that we shouldn’t tar everyone with the same brush. I get Emma Watson’s point that gender is a spectrum of feminine and masculine traits, and these traits don’t belong in a dichotomy – they transcend both genders. But there is nothing wrong with teaching people to read in between the lines, to understand implicit meanings, and not to take words at face value.

So don’t take FotF’s presentation at face value either. Take it with a pinch of salt or maybe even some humor. Laugh along, because there is another stereotype that we girls have to break: that we are so high-maintenance we can’t take a joke.

In fact, FotF’s message isn’t about gender – it’s about language. It’s about the difference between overt language and innuendo. And that’s not a lesson about communication with a girl or with a guy. That’s a lesson about communication with everyone. It’s something to keep in mind when your boss tells you you’ll be promoted “if you perform well”. Or when you ask your girlfriend where she wants to go for dinner and she says “anywhere”. Don’t take that as an invitation to bring her to KFC.

What’s wrong with death sir? What are we so mortally afraid of? Why can’t we treat death with a certain amount of humanity and dignity, and decency, and God forbid, maybe even humor. -Patch Adams

What’s uncanny is, Robin Williams played so many roles requiring him to say poignant yet hilarious things about death.

Okay, let’s look at the logic. You create man. Man suffers enormous amounts of pain. Man dies. Maybe you should have had just a few more brainstorming sessions prior to creation. You rested on the seventh day. Maybe you should’ve spent that day on compassion. -Patch Adams

It’s difficult to believe Robin Williams is dead–no, I think it’s more unbelievable that he committed suicide. Because it’s difficult to reconcile his comedic, boisterous personality with that of someone depressed. Or maybe not. Maybe he’s already shown us how funny people can be sad people and sad people can be funny people and that depression is actually an abundant source of wry, self-deprecating humour. At the start of “Patch Adams”, Williams’ character checks himself into a mental health hospital – for the first part of that movie he’s depressed and depressive and depressing, but so funny.

Robin Williams is a different character to us all. My dad remembers him as the alien from the planet Ork, or as GOOOOOOOOD MORRRRRRNING VIETNAAAAAAM. My sister remembers him as the guy in What Dreams May Come and Mrs Doubtfire. To me, he was mostly Patch Adams, and maybe a bit of Mr Keating in the Dead Poets’ Society. Or maybe the eccentric scientist who invented Flubber and forgot to attend his own wedding. The first Robin Williams movie I watched was “Jack”, which was essentially about a schoolkid trapped in the hairy, wrinkled, stumpy middle-aged body of Robin Williams because he had a disease that made him age super fast.

Robin Williams stepped into the bodies of characters who were spunky, rebellious non-conformists. Characters too brilliant to be bothered by conventions, norms, rules and institutions. Rather, they saw individual gumption to be more important.

We don’t read and write poetry because it’s cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for. To quote from Whitman, “O me! O life!… of the questions of these recurring; of the endless trains of the faithless… of cities filled with the foolish; what good amid these, O me, O life?” Answer. That you are here – that life exists, and identity; that the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse. -Keating, Dead Poets’ Society

My childhood wasn’t exactly spent on the playground, which is why till this day I can’t fully comprehend the idea behind monkey bars. It sounds pretty gross but I grew up on a steady diet of TV and movies. That means my dad was bringing home Robin Williams DVDs all the time. Most of my childhood was spent watching those films and rewatching them so many times that I could repeat Robin Williams’ lines at the dinner table to annoy the hell out of everybody. Any non-conforming traits that my personality bears and which continue to piss people off is because of the heavy influence of Robin Williams’ films.

And I am pretty sure I am not the only kid whose identity was shaped by the spunk of Robin Williams’ characters. Therefore we must all be thankful that he truly made those characters real.

World is trouble. Man needs a little madness, or else he dare not cut the rope and be free. -Patch Adams

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Hey there, reader. Thanks for stopping by, but I make no promises on the quality of writing here. I’m 18. I live in Singapore. I started this blog when I was 13 in the middle of an IT lesson in secondary school. I spent a really long time studying in one ... Continue reading →